The Starting Five

We need to quit napping around here and start writing more blog posts.

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Well, we’ve gone through the first two weeks of football and our Fearless Forecasters, and of course, I languish in fifth place ALREADY! That’s because I’ve tried to give some ‘love’ to local teams with my heart over the course of the first two weeks. Enough is enough!

After five of my six misses for the week were picks that should have been made with my brain, I will no longer let my heart stand in the way. It’s bad enough I had no success in the fantasy baseball season. And on top of that I had a miserable weekend with Notre Dame, Ohio State and the Browns — well, you get the picture.

Each of the first two weeks I’ve had 6 misses — by my count — and am 3 games behind Keller already because he went something like 22-3 this past week.

From now on it’s brains — no heart.

If you are a Little League baseball fan of the locals, then you might want to purchase a special DVD now available from The Herald-Mail.

Lesa Selders, our digital content specialist, has put together a DVD of the 2009 Maryland District 1 Tournament. It features games from district tournaments that were filmed during the course of competition.

It is available for $35 and can be purchased by contacting Lesa Selders at 301-733-5131, ext. 2350 or by email– lesas@herald-mail.com

It’s a worthy momento!

It’s not that I went out of the country, but I’m back now off the latest week of vacation. By the time more vacation time rolls around, my goodness, we will be into the football season.

Here we go … it’s the end of July and NFL training camps are getting primed to open. And high schools won’t be too long off as the first practice date for football of Aug. 15 rapidly approaches.

And I’m tired of hearing about the NFL already — Brett Favre this, Brett Favre that. Now the report (look at Mark Keller’s blog and link) that he is not coming out of retirement. Look at the picture on the link of Favre and tell me — should a graybeard like that be playing pro football? I really believe Favre has an ego problem. It’s the second straight year he has strung  people out over retiring or not. Just give it up. Your place in the Hall of Fame is there. Be like Joe Montana — go coach some high school football in Mississippi. (continue reading…)

Next July can’t get here soon enough.

The Tour de France ended yesterday, and I’m already feeling the void. The Versus channel does a most excellent job of covering the three-week race, and I can never seem to get enough of the pageantry of the whole event — blood, sweat and gears in a constant, colorful motion across breathtaking landscapes.

Lance Armstrong — whom I admire greatly as a champion of champions, clean or not — didn’t win as I had predicted. But he more than held his own, finishing third in his first Tour since 2005, and gave the race more drama and intrigue than it’d had since 2006, when Pennsylvania native Floyd Landis came back from the dead to capture the title (which, as we know, he unfortunately didn’t keep for long).

Maybe Floyd will return next year to mix it up with Armstrong and two-time champ Alberto Contador, who blasted Armstrong earlier today. Man, I can hardly wait.

Who says there isn’t a variety of sports entertainment at various levels in Hagerstown? Take a look at Wednesday’s offerings.

First, the District 1 11-12 Little League tournament begins — the same age group that sent Federal Little League to the World Series last year (My goodness the time flies). First-round games are on tap Wednesday at West End, Sharpsburg,, American and Hancock at 6 p.m.. Except for July 12, the initial schedule calls for games to be played every day up to the final on July 17.

There’s a Junior League game tonight at Maugansville.

There’s Legion baseball when a pretty good Frederick teams plays at Funkstown. The Hagerstown Braves play at the Boonsboro Pirates in the Blue Ridge Adult League.

At that ain’t all … The Summer Basketball League at St. Maria Goretti has its championship game Wednesday night at 7:30 — Goretti meets South Hagerstown.

After so many years of reporting sports you sort of think you’ve seen everything — until Monday night.

I was at the American-West End 9-10 All-Star game at West End … the closest in proximity to the Herald-Mail office whereby I could get back and write and then do desk duty. Boy oh boy, did that backfire. You figure a 6 p.m. game and by 8:30 you’re outta there.

What I, any most likely each of the veteran league officials and any of the fans — not to mention the coaches and players — experienced was  3 hours, 47 minutes of trudgery along the highway. Almost like a New York Yankees-Boston Red Sox game.

You had the feeling when the first four batters walked that it would be a long night. There were 40 base on balls and over 400 pitches thrown and in the end — even after the concession stand had been closed — American had a 27-16 win over West End in the losers bracket tilt.

So it was announced today (read here) that Lance Armstrong will be a support rider — or domestique — for Astana teammate Alberto Contador at the upcoming Tour de France.

I don’t buy it for a second.

Alpha males like Armstrong — a SEVEN-time Tour de France champion — don’t come out of retirement to fetch water bottles or block wind.

I definitely predict some team turmoil in July. It certainly will be interesting to follow.

I also predict an eighth victory for Armstrong.

OK … as stated in my profile page (see the link above), I play bass and sing in my church’s Contemporary Christian band. We’re called Ps. 150 (short for Psalm 150) and we do, in fact, rock.

And in case you don’t believe me, we’re out to prove it on June 6 at the City Park Bandshell. Our church, Real Life Community Church, is sponsoring its eighth annual Praise in the Park free concert at 4 p.m. The band Faith Child will start the concert, and at about 5:45, Ps. 150 will begin playing.

Honestly, it will be a good time for all. We’ll be giving out free hot dogs and drinks, will have free face painting and other activities for kids and a free drawing for an iPod and possibly some other prizes.

If you like Contemporary Christian music with a bit of a rock edge, you’ll like the music you hear. Come on out and join us. It’s totally free and will be totally cool. And feel free to say hello before or after the concert.

Here are a couple of videos from MSNBC. One is on a player sinking not one, but two, 90-foot shots. The next one is on a 9-year-old.
Videos